So, my sister was digging through the archives and discovered that our 6th great grandfather, Evan Watkins, built and owned Watkins Ferry which crosses the Potomac River where it divides Maryland and West Virginia (which I did not even know were adjacent). We have been up and down the east coast with family stuff, and yesterday we decided to detour over and take a look.
There’s no ferry any more obviously – there is a bridge which crosses from Williamsport, MD, into West Virginia. On the (now) West Virginia side, there’s an historical marker, which you can see in the photo, as well as what’s left of the house, known as Maidstone-on-the-Potomac.
It was raining pretty hard, and so after a few quick pictures we sat in the car at the side of the road looking around. I was startled out of my reverie by someone tapping on my window. It was a local woman who stopped to see if we needed any help – a reasonable guess, why else would anyone be sitting here?!). And isn’t it nice to know there are people like that still around! I explained why we were there, and she said “oh my goodness, I can’t believe it!” and launched into short speech, she was really into the history of the area and really seemed impressed that we had come.
I felt briefly and absurdly famous.
It got me thinking about what lasts. In philosophical approach I’m a Stoic – “memento mori“, Marcus Aurelius, and all that. So, I do think about death, and recent events have me thinking about it more. What will people remember about me? about you? If you have a family, you live on through your family, and they remember. But that usually only lasts a few generations. I remember my grandfather, but I expect nobody alive remembers much of my great grandfather. That Ferry, well, people remember. It was there. It’s marked. It’s a piece of history.
I write software. I look at it as a creative act, not unlike writing a novel. But software is ephemeral. Rarely does a piece of software matter for more than, say, a decade. The writer James Salter (whose work I admire very much) said:
There comes a time when you realize that everything is a dream, and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real.
Well, 2020 was weird for all the reasons you know. But in spite of having a lot of time on my hands, I read about the same number of books as last year (45 vs 41 in 2019). Guess I spent that extra time working.
Still, it was a great reading year, I’m happy with the quality of what I read. A lot of classic works, and only a small smattering of “comfort food”, thrillers and such. If you want see the complete list, it is here.
If I had to point to one book this year, it would be 1984, which I read on Bookship with my good friend Thomas. I’d not read it since high school 40 years ago, so for all intents I might as well not have read it. It’s devastating. It is a truly disturbing polemic wrapped inside a heartbreaking love story. Given the insanity of our election year, and the simultaneity of our truth-challenged President together with the frank and unrepentant censorship by his opponents, our high tech / media overlords, 1984 really hit home. Orwell nailed it, although he failed to see the rise of big media and that censorship might not (only) come from the State, but might also come from the private sector. (yes, yes, I know, technically only the government can “censor” – but Facebook and Twitter are the closest thing we have to a public square now – they must be held to a different standard than random/small private enterprises).
I love this quote from Orwell: “The enemy is the gramophone mind, whether or not one agrees with the record that is being played at the moment.”
I read deeply in the Homeric world this year, reading The Odyssey for the first time (in the new Emily Miller translation which is wonderful, and again reading socially with Thomas), and followed that An Odyssey by Daniel Mendelsohn. Mendelsohn is an Homeric scholar who took a history-based Homer sailing tour with his late father. What a wonderful story. I then moved to Ransom by David Malouf, a short, poetic retelling of the encounter of Achilles and Priam from The Iliad. The Odyssey was such great fun. And lastly, I read The Lost Books of The Odyssey by Zachary Mason, which is a series of “outtakes” – short stories – fake episodes from The Odyssey. These are often laugh out loud funny, and a real treat after finishing these other works.
Let me share a creepy excerpt from the “real” Odyssey, where Odysseus conjures the dead (Miller translation):
I drew my sword and dug a hole, a cubit widthways and lengthways, and I poured libations for all the dead: first honey-mix, sweet wine, and lastly, water. On the top, I sprinkled barley, and made a solemn vow that if I reached my homeland, I would sacrifice my best young heifer, still uncalved, and pile the altar high with offerings for the dead. I promised for Tiresias as well a pure black sheep, the best in all my flock. So with these vows, I called upon the dead. I took the sheep and slit their throats above the pit. Black blood flowed out. The spirits came up out of Erebus and gathered round.
As you may know I live in Hawaii, and I read a number of great books about, or set in, Hawaii. In the Time Before Light by Ian MacMillan is excellent. It is historical fiction set around the time of first contact in Hawaii, and follows the life of Pono, a kanaka maoli, a native Hawaiian. It is by turns riveting, brutal, romantic and educational, especially about old Hawaii. Wonderful storytelling that doesn’t sugar-coat anything. The book club I am in also read a modern sci-fi novel called Bones of Time, by Kathleen Ann Goonan, which is mostly set in Hawaii, and we read Reclaiming Kalakaua, a reconsideration of the life and reputation of David Kalakaua, the last king of Hawaii, based on contemporary accounts from Hawaiian sources.
During our time back east, we did a lot of road-tripping around the country. During one trip we visited Michelle’s folks, who live near Mt. Vernon, and I’d never been, so off we went. It was fascinating, and that together with it being an election year caused me to want to read more about our country’s founding, and Washington in particular. This led me to David McCullough’s 1776, which was equally fascinating and highly recommended. Then we went on a road trip to Chicago to see my son. During that trip Michelle and I listened to the audiobook for 1776, and followed it with John Adams. Boy were our founders interesting people! We combined all of this into some fun visits to Revolutionary war sites, including an inspiring visit to Valley Forge (in this COVID year it was a great reminder that persistence is rewarded), and Fort Lee in New York, which factored heavily in the early days of the War. This led me to George Washington’s Secret Six by Brian Kilmeade, a recounting of Washington’s spy ring (yes, he had one). And from there, I read Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, which surprised me in how well and literately it was written, in addition to being passionate about the War cause.
Speaking of spies, sadly, we lost John Le Carré (David Cornwell) this year. While I found his politics sometimes tiresome, his writing never was, and I re-read (for the nth time), his masterpieces A Perfect Spy and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Read them if you have not.
Also as part of the book club I am in, we have been making an effort to read more works by women and by authors from under-represented communities. In the spy genre, I *loved* American Spy, I felt (in a very small way), a taste of what is like to be a minority. I loved this quote from Jennifer Wilson in her review:
As such, Wilkinson does not graft the matter of race onto the spy novel but rather asks us to think about how being a minority is, in a sense, an act of espionage, a precarious state marked by shifting identities, competing loyalties, and a constant threat of violence.
We also read Americanah, which had a similar revelatory aspect, as well as often being laugh-out-loud funny.
At the beginning of the year, I finished up one last piece of Iceland reading, from my trip to Iceland: Smile of the Wolf, by Tim Leach. The early parts of Smile of the Wolf capture the grim beauty that is both the Icelandic terrain and the pagan northern world view. It mirrors the classic Icelandic sagas in many ways, but where the saga characters are usually pretty opaque, we get inside the heads of the characters and get a detail and color the sagas don’t provide, yet the cadence and speaking voices can be suitably terse or blunt. It’s transporting. Like a time machine to 10th century Iceland. Full review here: https://www.viking2917.com/smile-of-the-wolf-review/. The Half-Drowned King by Linnea Hartsuyker, a late December read, is also one of the better Viking novels I have read, and I’ve read more than a few….
Some books I really enjoyed this year: The Last Good Kiss, a darkly funny thriller by James Crumley. The Good Shepherd (and associated Tom Hanks movie!) by C.S. Forester, which I read socially with my friends Thomas and Lynn on Bookship – which then led to reading the first book in the HornBlower saga, Mr. Midshipman Hornblower. Which then led us to read The Game of Birds and Wolves about the female sub hunters in England during WWII. Really good fun all around.
Lastly I re-read a number of science fiction classics this year: Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan (who is in our Meet the Author program on Bookship!!!), The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Leguin, and (in anticipation of the not-yet-forthcoming movie), Dune. All of them amazing books even on a 3rd or 4th re-read.
Last night from midnight to 2am, I listened to eight passionate, innovative teams sharing their journey through the Purple Prize, an indigenous innovation competition in Hawaii where I am a mentor (BTW join us for the finals online!).
Even though it was late, the passion of these innovators meant I never got the least bit sleepy! Purple uses the now-common fast pitch format common to many accelerators – 5 minutes to introduce your company to potential investors and stakeholders. The fast pitch is really an art form – a performance art form. As both a performer and a consumer of this art form, I wanted to share a few thoughts on how to give a great performance. It is a performance, by the way – be yourself, but the “big stage” version of yourself. Passionate and confident. And practice!
Longer than an “elevator pitch”, shorter than a real VC pitch, it’s tricky. In just a few minutes you must concisely explain what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, why you will be successful, and what you are asking for (and not much else in 4 minutes!).
The first thing is to remember your audience. Assume they know nothing (and about you, it’s true. They know nothing. Assume nothing. Start at the beginning). On a demo day they’re likely to hear 10 of these pitches, or more. They’ve never heard a word about your company before. Their phone will buzz. Their attention will wander. Your internet/zoom will get glitchy at the wrong time. People can only consume so much information in short time. Avoid “cognitive overload” – keep it simple. Less is more. Nuance is not your friend here.
Here’s a formula:
Start with a story
Use your story to introduce your product. Simply and explicitly.
Explain how you make money. Simply and explicitly.
Explain how the world will be different when you are successful. Finish strong.
No more than 1-2 slides per minute. 5 minutes ~ 5-10 slides.
Your presentation should arc from the general down to the specific and back up to the general. Let’s unpack this a bit.
THE STORY
Your very first words need to bind people to you and your mission, and explain what you are up to. People remember stories. Please, read Mike Troiano’s https://entrepreneurship.mit.edu/how-to-tell-your-ventures-story. They won’t remember market positioning or value propositions or any of that other stuff. Tell them a story. They’re looking for a reason to like you. Give it to them. Get their attention with a story, an insight, an experience, a feeling. Don’t waste your first words on anything but your story (don’t make jokes about being last, or explain how nervous you are, or anything else).
I build Bookship, a social reading app. Here’s how I introduce myself and my product. My very first sentences, verbatim.
“Hi, I’m Mark. When my son was 16, I got him a copy of Dune for Christmas. Like most gift books, it sat on the shelf unread for a decade. A few years ago he told me he was going to read it (he’s grown now). I said, “I’ll read it with you”. What followed was a month of genuine engagement with my son. Priceless. I had a similar experience with my daughter shortly thereafter, (different book) and I said to myself, “I’m going to bottle this experience into an app so other people can get that same feeling”. And that’s how Bookship was born.
Notice: almost nothing about the product or features – it’s about the feeling, the emotion, the experience. Even better, the story is actually true. If you don’t have a good true story, remember Rule 19.
As Simon Sinek says, Start with Why. Your “why” might be a story, or it might be some phenomena or metric that speaks to you. Last night I heard the spark of many interesting stories. But often these sparks were buried in the middle of the presentation. I want to share them (with permission) because the stories are powerful, and to use them to illustrate how to make the most of them – by starting with them.
Sheila at MAGHugs is building a system for teachers to share positive news about things students did with the student and their parents (“I see you. You are valued“). Halfway through her presentation, she showed a slide with metrics illustrating the psychological challenges students face, starting with drop-out rates and culminating with a gut-wrenching statistic that every day 8 students commit suicide. Now I’m paying attention – what can we do to change that awful statistic? I’d advocate a pitch narrative that goes something like this: “Hi, I’m Sheila, and I was an educator for N decades. I can tell you many of our students are in trouble. Did you know that every day …… so, we’re building a system for positive feedback for every student through virtual hugs.“. That’s a narrative that grabs my attention and no matter what else she says, I’ll remember what she’s trying to do.
Polu Energy is building an innovative new power generation system. After hearing about the extremely powerful scientific team behind the company, and the general approach to the business, around slide 5 I learn that when salt water and fresh water come together, they make electricity. WTF? Really?? I had no idea. I’d suggest that as the opening line. “Hi, I’m Tate. Did you know that when salt water and fresh water come together they make electricity? We found a way to harness that at industrial scale. We’re Polu Energy. Blue energy from water…“. I immediately get the crazy insight that led to this company. I’ll remember that, and I want to hear more.
Preston & Gabor at Box Farm Labs are building a home hydroponics appliance. A Keurig for plants. Three or four minutes in, I hear that they started with a NASA project to grow plants in space in an automated way for long space voyages. That’s crazy shit. Hit me between the eyes with that in your first sentence. Hi, We’re Preston & Gabor. We learned how to grow plants in space for NASA, and we want to bring that to your kitchen. OK, that sounds pretty cool. Tell me more!
People remember stories. As Sinek says, “people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it“. But don’t belabor it. You don’t need four slides of “why”. You don’t have time. One slide. Less is More.
PRODUCT
Your Story should lead to your product. “Because of X, we built our product Y“. Explain Y (your product) in two or three sentences. Simple enough a high schooler can understand it. If you sell Carbon Offsets to Hawaii Visitors so local farms can plant food trees, like Kanu Offsets does, tell me that, just that simply, and at the beginning, so I am ready for everything else you tell me. That’s a mission I can get behind.
People can only take in so much – don’t make them work for it. Remember cognitive overload. If you want to give more detail (and you should!), do so – but only after you’ve given me a one sentence summary of what your product does, that I can internalize.
BUSINESS
Explain how you intend to make money. Tell me like I was in high school – simple and straightforward. The fancy term for this is business model. It’s surprising to me how often I hear a pitch where it’s unclear who pays for the product. For example, consider products sold into an educational context – who pays for it? The student? the parent? the teacher? the principle? the school district? Don’t make me guess. If you aren’t sure yet, that’s ok – just say so. But in a short pitch, ambiguity is more your enemy than error. If you are vague, I’ll assume the worst. But if you are precise but wrong, well, no harm no foul. Every startup makes mistakes and learns. Better to present with conviction, while offering up the chance you may learn and change in the future.
CLOSE STRONG.
The arc of your presentation is:
here’s why we’re doing what we’re doing.
Here’s what we do.
Here’s how the world will be different when we are successful.
You move from the mission to the product to the business to the vision. General to specific to general.
I’ve seen so many pitches (not last night though!), that end in a morass of details and business plans and profit margins and …. don’t do this. Close strong. Explain how the world will be different when you are successful. Leave me with a clear memory of who you are and what you stand for.
You will face some temptations when you build your pitch:
You will be tempted to tell me everything you know.Don’t. Make sure I get a clear understanding of what you do. The details can follow.
You will be tempted to cram everything onto the slides.Don’t. Complicated diagrams and paragraphs of text in 12pt font will never be understood. You might as well not show them. Big font, simple pictures, simple diagrams. There will be times later to deliver all that wonderful detail and learning you have done. Now’s not the time.
You will be tempted to glam things up – use large words and jargon to make your initiative sound sophisticated, even if it’s straightforward. Don’t. Simplicity is your friend here. Simple is good.
You will be tempted to use metaphors and generalities.Don’t. I love me a good metaphor, but in 4 minutes it’s too easy to be misunderstood, or not understood. Simple and explicit is the ticket.
If you follow other things I’ve written, you know I’m a fan of Rules. Or rather, lists of Rules. My list of professional rules, somewhat inspired by Gibb’s Rules (from NCIS), my Leadership Rules from the Ancient Greeks. Fred Harvey, creator of one of the earliest travel companies and the first US restaurant chain, and his rules. Rules give us things to fall back on when it’s unclear how to proceed.
Recently I took a tour of Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home, and saw that he had his own rules, cribbed from 110 Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation, which is based on a set of rules composed by French Jesuits in 1595.
I was sufficiently intrigued by Washington’s history and the manner in which people respected him, that I realized I did not know enough about him. Washington was widely respected for that quality we refer to today as “gravitas“. As a result I am reading David McCullough’s 1776, which so far is good fun and highly informative. (I’m running a public reading on my social reading app Bookship, tap the link below to join me!)
Some of them are from another age. Some of them are laugh-out-loud funny (“When in Company, put not your Hands to any Part of the Body, not usually Discovered.“, “In the Presence of Others Sing not to yourself with a humming Noise, nor Drum with your Fingers or Feet.“).
Some of them are wildly topical – masks and social distancing, anyone? (“If You Cough, Sneeze, Sigh, or Yawn, do it not Loud but Privately; and Speak not in your Yawning, but put Your handkerchief or Hand before your face and turn aside.“, “Shake not the head, Feet, or Legs roll not the Eyes lift not one eyebrow higher than the other wry not the mouth, and bedew no mans face with your Spittle, by approaching too near him when you Speak.”)
Some management lessons are to be found:
Being to advise or reprehend any one, consider whether it ought to be in public or in Private; presently, or at Some other time in what terms to do it & in reproving Show no Sign of Cholar but do it with all Sweetness and Mildness.
Wherein you reprove Another be unblameable yourself; for example is more prevalent than Precepts.
Never express anything unbecoming, nor Act against the Rules Moral before your inferiors.
Detract not from others neither be excessive in Commanding.
Undertake not what you cannot Perform but be Careful to keep your Promise.
Let thy carriage be such as becomes a Man Grave Settled and attentive to that which is spoken. Contradict not at every turn what others Say.
And lastly a few good reminders of personal behavior, not unlike things Marcus Aurelius might say.
Let your Conversation be without Malice or Envy, for ‘is a Sign of a Tractable and Commendable Nature: And in all Causes of Passion admit Reason to Govern.
Speak not injurious Words neither in Jest nor Earnest Scoff at none although they give Occasion.
Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.
The rules are a quick read, even if many of them are from another age. Good fun. And since there’s an election coming up, I’ll leave you with a view into Washington’s campaign tactics 🙂
COVID has led to an even crazier polarization of politics than we’ve seen in an already polarized Trump era. Even the slightest of issues around COVID, which one would hope would be treated as a public health issue and not a cudgel to bash one’s opponent, are politicized. I excuse neither the left nor the right here, I see them as equal offenders.
The writer H. L. Mencken has many pithy quotes about politics, but there’s an exchange in Howard Fast’s book Being Red that really captures how I feel about politics. Via Real Clear Politics
Fast would run for Congress on the American Labor Party ticket, write frequently for the Daily Worker, win the Stalin Peace Prize, be temporarily blacklisted in Hollywood, hauled before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and jailed for contempt of Congress. In the late 1950s, he turned away from communism and wrote a book about the experience called “Being Red.”
In that memoir he relates an evocative encounter in late July 1948 at the Progressive Party convention, which he attended as a credentialed journalist and where he ran into one of his idols, H.L. Mencken. When Fast went to shake the great Baltimore Sun columnist’s hand, Mencken took it in both of his own hands and told him he’d just read “The American,” Fast’s novel based on the life of former Illinois Gov. John Peter Altgeld.
Mencken said that if he’d ever written anything that good, he’d “put down my pen with pleasure.” Howard Fast found this praise fulsome, but appreciated it nonetheless, and thanked Mencken, who then said, in reference to the Progressives, “Fast, what in hell’s name are you doing with this gang?”
“I tried to invent some clever reply, but all I could say was that it was a better place to be than at the Republican or Democratic convention,” Fast wrote. “This was as far from a bright or witty rejoinder as one could get, but I was tongue-tied, and the thought of preaching to Mencken or haranguing him was inconceivable. It was not just that I admired him and loved the way he wrote and thought, but he had just given me the best straightforward compliment I had ever received. I had no wish to challenge him. I owed him too much.”
But Mencken wasn’t finished.
“There’s a better place than that,” he said. “With yourself.”
“I can’t put politics aside,” Fast protested.
“Put it aside?” Mencken snorted. “Hell, no. Henry Louis Mencken is a party of one. Do you understand me? You’re a party of one. You don’t put politics aside; you taste it, smell it, listen to it, write it. You don’t join it. If you do, these clowns will destroy you as surely as the sun rises and sets.”
